Mark and I have been exploring and living in our camper van Zesty full-time since the end of July 2018. Last week, I wrote a blog (with tons of photos) about arriving in Canada, early September, and our first ten or so days on Vancouver Island. The rain was omnipresent, but we managed to have a wonderful time. When the sky cleared, Mark and I left Campbell River (see my Bears vs. Salmon post for one of our highlights in Canada) to explore a more remote and cooler part of the island – the north – before tracing the East Coast all the way to its southern point.

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Sayward

Few travelers venture north of Campbell River, where island communities are smaller and hardier. It’s colder and wetter up there, so we tried to take advantage of the few sunny days in the forecast. We stopped at the town of Sayward, anticipating to spend the night there at a free campground. Upon discovering that our resource, iOverlander, was wrong – there is a fee to dry camp in town – we checked out the inviting waterfront and moved on to spend the night elsewhere.

The logging industry is huge on Vancouver Island. Continue reading